John
by TheImmortalMarauder
Summary: A terrible accident wipes Sherlock's brain of the past five years. Doctor Watson is nothing more than another stranger in his eyes. Working together, can they bring back what was lost?
1. Awakening

**A/N:**

Sherlock's POV. I'm really happy because I actually have some idea of where the plot is going! Enjoy!

~tIM

* * *

White. Blinding whiteness was everywhere. His vision was blurred, but soon everything came into focus. White panels. A ceiling. Newly replaced. He tried to move his head, but he couldn't. It was too heavy, and it throbbed painfully. So, instead, he was left to stare at the whiteness. The third panel to the left was crooked. _Replaced by a divorced man, left to his gambling habit in a tough financial situation_ he concluded. _Never a good combination._ Soon, there were noises added to the whiteness; sharp, bleating noises. He was on a hospital bed. Well, that was new, Sherlock had never woken up on a hospital bed before. He felt the IV taped to his right wrist, his reference band around his ankle. All his limbs were functioning and sensory, except for his head. What was wrong with his head?

The whiteness turned black, and someone was screaming. There were flashes of red and grey, and a sick laughter echoed around Sherlock's head. But as suddenly as it had appeared, the apparition faded away, leaving him in the numbing whiteness of the ward again. _What was that?_ he thought to himself. _A dream? A nightmare? I don't have either…_ unable to place the images in his memory, he blamed whatever drug was being given to him through the IV.

"Mr Holmes?" a woman wearing a white coat and holding a clipboard appeared in the edges of his vision.

_Unmarried but in a relationship with a co-worker; a mother of triplets. Used to do ballet semi-professionally._

"Mr Holmes, can you hear me?"

_Yes, of course I can hear you._

"Mmm," he grunted, unable to move his mouth around the words he was trying to say.

"Can I talk to him, please?" a voice said, coming from his left. It was a man in his thirties, a non-smoker, recently traumatised.

"In a minute, Doctor Watson, I just have to ask Mr Holmes a few questions."

"Just… just let the doctor through," Sherlock said, his speech slurring. "Maybe he can tell me what's… what's wrong with my bloody head."

The woman sighed and scribbled something down on her clipboard, but soon vanished and was replaced by a man in a plaid button down shirt and black jacket. He was blond, about 5"6 and had a scar just underneath his left cheekbone; and formerly an army doctor. Something about his arrival calmed Sherlock down, easing the pain in his head and letting him think a bit more clearly.

"Hey, Sherlock," he said smiling. "You feeling okay?"

"Why aren't you wearing a coat?"

"Sorry?"

"You're my doctor, it's really quite unprofessional of you not to be dressed in appropriate attire while treating a patient."

Doctor Watson was taken aback. He looked down at Sherlock, almost as if he had taken offense.

"You do know who I am, don't you?"

"Of course I know who you are, you're my doctor."

The man's eyes widened, and stammering slightly, he disappeared from view. _What is going on?_ _The medicine industry has seriously gone downhill if this is the standard these days._ The woman flashed in and out of the corners of his eyes. Two people were having a hushed conversation back towards his left, but they were too far away for Sherlock to make anything out. The machine kept bleating at his side, a monotonous G flat adding some sort of order to the mild chaos consuming his last few minutes.

A pair of footsteps approached, one purposeful and decisive, the other lagging yet sharp. He recognized both.

"Hello Lestrade. Mycroft, go away."

They stood on either side of his bed, looking down at Sherlock with concern. It was rather unnerving.

"Good to see you too, brother," Mycroft smiled, but it turned into more of a grimace. _Revolting._

"He knows who we are… so how come he doesn't know John?" Lestrade queried.

"Who?" he asked. The irritating white coat woman appeared back at the foot of his bed, accompanied by a man in a white coat.

"Sherlock, this is very important. What is the last thing you remember?" Mycroft looked genuinely worried.

"I… I just moved into a new Baker Street, and asked Mike Stamford about a flatmate. Lestrade, you were working on the joint suicides… I don't think they are suicides, by the way. Why? Is something wrong? Actually yes, something is wrong, my _head._ Where is that doctor?"

The machine bleeped faster. His head hurt more. The lights were growing brighter, and everything was a bit out of focus.

"I'm afraid Mr Holmes is still in a fragile condition," the coat woman said. "He will need to rest." Lestrade and Mycroft frowned, but walked away, and instead the little doctor came back into view, looking at Sherlock silently from afar. The machine bleeped more slowly. The man in the white coat came and fiddled with the drip. The painkillers kicked in, and he slid back into a stupor with Doctor Watson's face etched in his mind.


	2. Irrevocable

**A/N:**

John's POV. A lot of internal dialogue here. Next chapter coming very soon!

~tIM

* * *

Sherlock was lying limply on his hospital bed, looking odd in the blue gown of a patient instead of his billowing black trench coat. John himself had only just gotten released from his ward as he was back in reasonable physical condition. However he was seeing three different therapists on almost a daily basis, as the events he had undergone had left his mind addled and unstable as it had been after Sherlock had "committed suicide". Thankfully, with some help, he had been able to stop the nightmares and hallucinations; bearing in mind that Sherlock would wake up, and return to Baker Street, where they could continue in their lives as if nothing had ever happened.

But Sherlock didn't know who John was.

Of course, an injury like the one Sherlock had received would leave some damage. He has been comatose for close to a month, and was now on his way to recovery, waking for minutes at a time; but his memory of the past few years was gone. All traces of their friendship vanished, just like that. He was Doctor Watson, and nothing more.

"Damn it, Sherlock!" he exclaimed, not caring who heard him. He gripped the bar at the end of the bed tightly, veins appearing at the surface of his skin, his knuckles turning white. Of course the bastard had forgotten everything up until _hours just before they had met_. The chances of that happening were so infinitesimally small, but it was just John's luck. That little shred of hope he had been holding on to, the light at the end of this long tunnel that John has made his way through these past excruciating weeks had been snuffed out. He was lost again, stumbling in the dark.

"Coo-ee!" Mrs Hudson called softly, making her way over to where John stood. "I've brought you a cuppa; hold on, it's just in here somewhere..." she opened her handbag and began rifling clumsily through her possessions. "Ah! There you go," she said, handing John a thermos.

"Thanks," he replied distantly, nodding to show his appreciation and taking the thermos but leaving it untouched.

"Are you alright, dearie? Have you eaten today?" Mrs Hudson queried, looking at her tenant thoughtfully. As grateful as he was for her concern, John wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

"Yes," he lied. "Grabbed a sandwich on my way over this morning." In truth he had spent the night at the hospital.

"Well, I'll leave you here then. Don't forget your appointment in half an hour with Doctor Francis."

_Shit._ John had forgotten about his therapy session this morning. Thanks God for dear old Mrs Hudson; as nosy and fussy as their landlady was, she meant well. Sherlock remembered her; he remembered the case involving her husband's imminent execution. He remembered moving some of his possessions into the 221b. He remembered how flustered Mrs Hudson had been at seeing the kitchen table transformed into a small laboratory. It seemed, despite that, Sherlock recalled her fondly when she first came to visit. He had smiled at her, and asked her about her sister. He hadn't asked John about his sister.

_That's because he doesn't remember that you have a sister, you idiot._

Sherlock looked uncomfortable, almost too tall for the bed with his thin limbs falling at awkward angles. John had never seen Sherlock sleeping so much before. His expression was oddly peaceful, probably because his brain was finally getting a break from its constant stream of activity. You could see the lines where Sherlock's brow would furrow when he was deep in concentration. His hands would meet, his long, pale fingertips brushing his lips. Hundreds of thoughts would be passing undetected past his eyes. He would notice the unnoticed. He would not see, but observe. As he always did.

Mrs Hudson was gone. How long had he been staring at Sherlock? _Probably too long. People will start to notice._ Notice what, though? Was there anything wrong with staring? No. Nothing wrong at all. It was perfectly normal for a friend to be looking concernedly at a sleeping patient. _Of course, people will assume that it's some sort of infatuation. Which it isn't. Is it?_

It's funny how much memories change a person. Besides the faint bruises on Sherlock's temple from where he had hit his head, he looked no different from before the accident. But watching him now, John could see that it wasn't Sherlock anymore. Well, it wasn't _John's_ Sherlock. And he was the only Sherlock that mattered.

_That's horrible, John._

Horrible, maybe. But so very true. Because just like when he jumped off the roof at Bart's, John had lost Sherlock again.


	3. Aftermath

Gone? His memory couldn't be gone. That was stupid. True, it wasn't January of 2010, it was March of 2015. According to the doctors, he had only been in a coma for 29 days. It wouldn't take a fetus to see that there was a gap; but Sherlock could always count on his memory. It was the one thing he had faith in, the one thing he could rely on. It couldn't be gone.

He was more awake than usual; the doctors had been dosing him less and less as time wore on. Sherlock was much more alert than he had been since... whatever had happened to his head. He had fallen, they said. Fallen off a balcony. _What idiot falls off of a balcony?_ there was something they weren't telling him. Something had happened. But what?

Visiting hours had long since passed. With only a few coughs and bleeps from the monitor every now and then, it would be quiet enough. Closing his eyes Sherlock entered the recesses of his mind, and visualised himself in his mind palace.

It was destroyed. Entire rooms had caved in on themselves, and bits of data had been strewn all over the place, far from where they had been previously stored. Sherlock began to clean up and sort through the wreckage, re-filing and organising everything back to its original place. He was working his way upwards quite efficiently; some areas, however, were too damaged to enter. Sherlock hated not being able to fix them, and the more inaccessible rooms he saw, the more frustrated he became. _Gone. Ugh._

When he reached the top floor, which contained the most often and frequently used information, Sherlock doubled back. A giant metal safe the size of a house sat in the middle of the room. _What on Earth? A safe? Containing what?_ He tried to open it; unsuccessfully. It required a code, a password. Four letters. _Why on earth would I make a safe? And then lock myself out of it?_

_Oh. That's clever._

The safe would keep all the information inside itself protected if anything damage were to occur. Well, that was Sherlock's theory, and given that he had created the safe, it made sense. Now he just needed the password.

_What the hell is the password?_

He started browsing through all the information he could, searching for an answer. _Birthday? No, I wouldn't be that boring. It could be a date, though. What else... what else? A –_

"Mr Holmes?"

Sherlock's eyes snapped open to see white-coat woman (or Doctor Melissa Andrews, as people were calling her) standing over his bed, clipboard in hand.

"I'm busy."

"Busy? With what, exactly?"

"My m- stuff."

Doctor Andrews smiled sarcastically. "Your 'stuff' will have to wait a moment, Mr Holmes. I'm here to inform you that you will be moving to a different ward within the next few hours." With this she smiled. _She's probably glad to be getting rid of me. Well, the feeling is mutual._ "Luckily for you, you'll be able to leave in about a week, given your current rate of recovery. One of our specialist counsellors will come and check on you daily -"

Sherlock interrupted her with a disapproving snort. _Counsellor indeed._

"You are still psychologically unwell, Mr Holmes. There may be traumatic repercussions that will come long after you've settled back into society, and you will need to be prepared for them." Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "Repercussions?"

"Sudden nausea, hallucinations, panic attacks, things of that nature. Like I said, there are experts who work with patients in your situation that can help."

Sherlock grimaced; panic attacks were hardly of his concern at the moment. "And my memory loss?"

Doctor Andrews sighed. "You must understand that you have sustained what appears to be permanent damage. But I can ask them to try to help you regain whatever you can."

She turned on her heel and left, and a nurse rushed over to start helping Sherlock to his new ward. He smiled. He had been able to retain some of his past, and though Sherlock doubted that he would need help, there were people he could work with. Whether it was the medication, or the fact that wouldn't have to endure any more of Doctor Andrew's dreary conversations, or that there was a slight possibility that the last five years of his life had not been in vain; Sherlock was unusually contented. All was not yet lost.

Everything went black.

"Have we finally defeated the great Sherlock Holmes?" The voice was chilling, an air of vengeance and insanity to it. The detective didn't recognize it at all; but it was a man, probably just forty, and he sounded far too happy for Sherlock's liking. A silver light shone out from the room. Sherlock pinpointed it at the source, which seemed to be some sort of metal object, held at chest height against… something he couldn't quite make out. "Well?" the voice demanded, making him shiver involuntarily.

The room began to reappear slowly before Sherlock's eyes. There were nurses everywhere. _Christ,_ he thought. _I'm perfectly fine._ But that voice haunted Sherlock, knowing that he had heard it before, but not knowing where or when. Despite his detachment to emotions, Sherlock Holmes was unquestionably afraid.

* * *

**A/N:**

I'm not entirely sure about the dates, but I've looked them up a few times and it seems to fit. Just to clarify this is post-Reichenbach reunion. Thanks for all your feedback/likes/follows! [:

~tIM


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